


Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust

by RaenUE



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Rekka no Ken | Fire Emblem: Blazing Sword
Genre: I initially tagged this as explicit because of the intensity of the graphic violence, Pre-Canon, but I've reread it and I think it's 'just' on the upper end of mature, cw for some not so subtle suicidal undertones, keep that in mind, more poetic than prose which means obnoxious formatting that I’m not optimizing for mobile sorry, vaguely a character study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-03
Updated: 2018-12-03
Packaged: 2019-09-06 03:09:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16823929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RaenUE/pseuds/RaenUE
Summary: Renault's past catches up to him in ways he'd never imagine, and confronting it means facing the parts of himself that he hates the most.A brief exploration of the backstory hinted at within Renault's supports with Canas, Wallace, and Lucius.





	Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust

Renault wasn’t happy.

In truth, he likely never would be again.

He had made a terrible mistake, and all he could do now was do everything he could to make things right.

His terrible mistake, his grievous error, his mortal sin.

Mankind was never meant to live more than once.

Mankind was never meant to live forever.

And yet, in his hubris, Renault tried to reach the sun.

He was first a horrid mercenary, a sellsword whose only concerns were getting the coin he and his partner worked for. Countless people, men, woman, and children, villains and civilians alike, met the end of their life at the end of his blade because someone was willing to fork up the cash to see them killed. He lived every day for the next, and wouldn't have it any other way.

Of course, carefree days like that were bound to come to an end.

His partner, the only person who he wanted to spend the rest of his days with, sustained a light wound on his leg while on the job.

Nothing was thought of it until the cut began to swell, to fester as it began to emit the stench of decay.

He had been poisoned.

His eventual demise would be slow and painful if he went untreated.

All the apothecaries refused to make him the medicine he needed to cure his friend, let alone sell it to him. The reputation Renault had gained in the region preceded him, and he could do nothing about it.

Renault couldn’t leave his friend alone unprotected as he traveled all over Elibe in search of the medicine, so he brought him with him.

He carried his friend’s body every step of the way.

Their journey was rough.

The wound grew, and grew, and continued to eat away at his flesh.

At some point, his foot had fallen off, the flesh and bone fully consumed by the disease that plagued his body.

By that point, Renault had grown used to the stench of decay that surrounded the two of them.

Eventually, an errant cleric who knew nothing of their misdeeds confirmed Renault’s suspicions, his worst fears.

His friend was beyond help.

No normal medicine or magic would save him.

The clerics exact words gave Renault hope.

If no normal magic would work, he’d just have to seek out someone who used something that went beyond normal.

He had learned of an abnormal sorcerer, across the sea, who had managed to conquer death, who could bring people back to life.

And so, with no other options left, he set off for Dread Isle.

By the time they made landfall, his friend’s body had long gone cold.

For the first time in his life, Renault shed tears.

It hurt, it hurt so much to watch his friend not just die, but spend so long suffering as he waited to die.

In the last few months he had lost the ability to speak through the pain, but Renault could feel him calling out, asking to be put out of his misery.

But Renault was too afraid to let go.

His friend was suffering, and Renault hadn’t been able to save him.

He sought out the sorcerer.

He carried the decaying corpse to his lair.

Asked the man, Negral, to bring his friend back.

He’d do anything, he said.

Anything to see his friend again.

No matter what it took, it was all he wanted anymore.

The sorcerer needed subjects to experiment on.

He should have seen the end result of this coming.

He should have seen that something was wrong from the start.

But he didn’t.

He only saw the outcome that he wanted.

He helped Negral perfect his morphs, he helped Negral perfect his immortality, he helped Negral perfect the extraction of Quintessence.

A decade passed, and then another, and then another.

Time gradually lost meaning, and eventually Renault realized he had stopped aging.

He had stopped needing to eat.

But it wasn’t a concern to him.

If this was what brought back his friend, then he didn’t care the cost.

Eventually Negral fulfilled his end of the bargain.

He tried to bring back Renault’s friend.

He tried, at least.

Or he claimed he tried, at least.

Or he wanted Renault to believe that he had tried, at least.

The twitching, the inability to speak, the lack of reaction to stimulus…

Everything was wrong.

What was ‘brought back’ couldn’t be considered a human no more than a corpse on strings could be.

What stood before him was not the friend he had lost.

Renault, in that moment, realized that he had done something he shouldn’t have.

Negral wanted power for some unknown yet undoubtedly sinister means, and Renault had given him everything he needed to amass it.

And so Renault ran.

He fled Dread Isle, he fled the horrors he had brought about, he fled the man who had granted him the punishment of eternal life.

Another decade passed.

Renault knew he needed to do something to stop the menace Negral had become.

Nobody who sought so much power could ever be satisfied with such a small island.

But unlike Negral, he was no genius.

The only thing that Renault had going for him, aside from an ageless, undying uncanny form was his skill with a sword.

If he couldn’t defeat Negral himself, he’d have to find someone who could.

And so he settled in Caelin, the only place where he hadn’t yet made a name for himself, and began to train as many people as he could.

A few more decades passed.

He had become an effective, respected teacher.

Rumors spread throughout the air about him.

About how his eyes were an unsettling, striking gold color, and how he never seemed to age.

About how he seemed almost inhuman with a blade.

But even if people believed what those rumors entailed, they didn’t seem to care.

He trained countless men in Caelin, and his results were unparalleled.

Everyone in Caelin who had picked up a sword knew of him.

And yet Renault felt no different.

Negral was still out there, and Renault was no closer to having found someone who could put a stop to the threat he posed.

A few years later, the rumors about him began to change in tone.

By the time they reached his ears, it had become something that he couldn’t ignore.

Someone who bore a remarkable resemblance to him had been terrorizing people in the countryside.

Eyewitness descriptions mentioned an unnerving gait and an almost insect-like series of spasms that made the hair on the back of your neck stand on end.

And, of course, striking gold eyes.

When Renault had left Negral they hadn’t been able to create morphs without a person to use as a blueprint, but if he had progressed in technique this far in such a short time…

It may be too late to stop him.

There was some doubt in Renault’s mind that this person was a morph meant to imitate him, but he couldn’t take any chances.

He requested a period of leave from Lord Hausen, which was granted, and then set out to hunt down his doppelganger.

It took a few years, but he eventually picked up on his morph’s trail.

From the information he had received, it seemed to be hiding out in the woods surrounding a small town in Etruria.

He entered town shortly after nightfall.

The village head was more than happy to share as much information as he had, since the morph seemed to have been attacking livestock under the cover of night, and the townsfolk would be grateful if he could rid them of the monster.

Renault’s skin began to crawl, and he excused himself.

The morph was nearby.

He could feel it.

Not a moment after he stepped outside a scream pierced the night.

A pit formed in Renault’s stomach, and he rushed over to the source.

He was probably too late, but if he could save even one person, maybe he wouldn’t be a total failure.

He reached the cabin the scream had come from in the next moment and burst through the half-opened front door.

His eyes darted around as he could hear a series of wet crunches reverberate throughout the room, almost like someone was biting into an apple again and again and again and again.

A woman and child were in the corner, their eyes locked on something happening behind an overturned table. They seemed shaken up but otherwise unharmed, but from the signs of struggle around the room, he doubted the same could be said about any other occupants.

Renault crept around the table, slowly drawing his sword.

The blood splatter on the floor slowly entered into his view.

Then a lifeless limb that eventually gave way to a full body.

A knife was embedded in the man’s chest.

Then a person… no, it was just a mere creature created in the shape of himself crouched over the recently deceased taking bite after bite after bite out of the man’s flesh.

Renault’s body froze.

He could barely process what was happening before him.

He had told himself he was ready to face whatever awaited him at the end of his hunt, but the breath caught in his throat told him otherwise.

The morph paused its feast.

It seemed to sniff the air, then stood up slowly.

It turned to Renault, a smile on its face.

It was like looking in a bloodstained mirror, but in the worst possible way.

It took a step towards him, snapping Renault out of his dissociate state.

Renault raised his blade, his stance unsteady.

“Please, Renault.”

The morph spoke with a smug smile.

Hearing something else use your own voice was unsettling in a way words couldn't describe.

There was something fundamentally wrong about it.

“Do you really think a mere sword is enough to kill me?”

It gestured towards the body on this floor.

“This man had no shortage of swords and you can see what good that did him.”

The morph cackled.

Renault had heard enough.

He stepped forward and swung at his unarmed imitator.

The morph stepped aside and parried the blade with its arm, forcing Renault back.

“Do you really think you could kill me?”

The morph laughed again, taking another slow step towards Renault.

“I’m you. I know everything you know, and I know everything that you’d do, and I know how to counter anything you’d do. The best you could hope for is a stalemate.”

Renault took a deep breath.

He glanced at the woman and the child trembling in the corner of the room.

If need be, he could get in between them and the morph, to give them some time to escape, to run away.

“You’re not me.”

Renault charged towards the morph, sword held high.

The morph blocked it using both arms when Renault swung it.

As expected.

Renault let go of the blade and continued his charge.

The morph had a moment to process what had happened before Renault tackled it to the ground.

Renault wasted no time bringing his hands up to the morph’s neck.

And he squeezed.

Hard.

“You’re not me! You’ll never be me! You’ll never be more than my failures given form!”

Renault yelled from atop the morph, pinning it to the ground.

“Negral made you in my image, but his image of me is decades out of date!”

The morph gasped for air as he continued to squeeze.

“You’re nothing but a reflection of me when I was at my worst!”

Squeeze.

“I’ve changed!”

Squeeze.

“I’M NOT YOU ANYMORE!!”

Harder.

“I DON’T NEED A SWORD TO KILL YOU! I DON’T NEED SOME TOOL TO KILL ANYMORE! I DON’T NEED SOME TOOL TO DISTANCE MYSELF FROM THIS SENSATION! I FEEL SICK! I HATE THIS! I HATE HAVING TO DO THIS BUT YOU’VE GIVEN ME NO CHOICE!!!”

The morph’s eyes began to roll back into its head.

“I HATE YOU! I HATE EVERYTHING ABOUT YOU! I HATE HOW I USED TO BE YOU!”

Foam began to spew from its mouth.

“YOU’RE EVERYTHING I’VE TRIED TO THROW AWAY, EVERYTHING THAT I’VE TRIED TO GET RID OF!”

An indescribable noise came from its throat as its whole body began to seize.

“YOU’RE NOTHING MORE THAN MY WEAKNESS!"

The spasms grew more and more violent before suddenly coming to a stop.

“AND THIS TIME I’M GOING TO MAKE SURE YOU STAY DEAD!”

Renault roared and continued to squeeze.

And squeeze.

And squeeze.

And squeeze.

Eventually, Renault returned to his senses.

He looked down.

The morph was dead.

Its body already was beginning to melt away.

Its body was returning to the primordial ooze from whence it came.

Renault felt the desire to retch begin to work his way through his system.

But as always, he suppressed it.

He looked up.

The woman and child were still in the corner, now sobbing.

The village leader stood in the doorway, his eyes wide.

“What the hell did you do?”

His voice was barely above a whisper.

Renault got up.

The village leader flinched as Renault walked towards him.

“I’m sorry I didn’t get here sooner.”

Renault’s voice couldn’t even be called a whisper.

Renault pushed past the man.

And he ran.

Again.

**Author's Note:**

> While in the time since posting this I've grown a bit less fond of "it was a morph with Renault's face" as a solution to the mystery of "why did Renault kill Lucius' father despite having no apparent motive given that he was no longer working for Nergal at the time?", I still feel like I accomplished what I set out to do with this. I don't think that it's unlikely that I will revisit this period of Renault's life again in the future, but I'll have to find another answer I'm satisfied with before I do that.
> 
> To spell out how I had chosen to reconcile this with Lucius’ A support: Renault blamed himself (and his weakness) for Lucius’ father’s death and seeing how much of an effect it had on Lucius after so many years ended up reaffirming his belief that he might as well have killed Lucius' father himself. Lucius' memories had been distorted by time and trauma to the point where he isn't able to realize that Renault's claim is mostly false.  
> You might feel that this takes away from the 'impact' of their support, but I think that it serves to remind us that the aid Renault gave to Nergal didn't just have the ~grand~ effect of eventually enabling him to summon a dragon into Elibe: Renault's quest to revive his friend caused countless people to die, even if they were not killed by a blade wielded within his hand. Between Brendan Reed and the rest of the Black Fang, and the various leaders of the Lycian League that conspired to overthrow Ostia with Ephidel's aid and the countless troops that died for their cause (as well as anyone else who met an end due to the machinations of a morph) the body count that stemmed from Renault's actions is impossible to quantify and because of that it's easy for both us and Renault (who by the events of Blazing Blade has surely come to realize if he had ever truly forgotten) to forget that each of those people weren't some faceless mook (in-universe, at least). They presumably had a family, wishes and dreams, maybe even a quest of their own, and Renault's actions brought all that to an end.  
> Regardless of if Renault was the one who sunk the knife into Lucius' father's chest, their support still serves to confront Renault with the harsh reality that he's hurt far more people than he could comprehend and that he's hurt them in ways he could never anticipate, _and yet despite the enormity of the task in front of him he still seeks to atone for what he's done_.
> 
> I like Renault a lot. He's an interesting character, and even if this isn't something that I'll stand by steadfast, I still hope I did him justice with this.


End file.
